Plan to Strike Lebanon a Year Old? An American Test Case?

Seymour Hersh - the guy who broke the Abu Ghraib story - has a new article in the latest New Yorker that in essence tells us that the Israel had been planning this offensive for a year and was only looking for a pretext (kidnapping) to use it. He charges that the US knew about the plan and in fact had plans that mirrored it for use in Iran. It saw Israel's offensive on Hezbollah and Lebanon as a test run of its plans for Iran.

The reason the US looked to give Israel "a green-light" early on and resisted early calls for a ceasefire was so they could give Israel time to do its thing.

Hahaha!! If true than one cannot help but be amused at the sheer idiocy of US and Israeli leaders stupid enough to believe that they would be able to succeed. As the past few weeks have demonstrated, the air-war failed and then the ground war failed. The US should take those lessons to heart when thinking of the much larger and better armed Iran.

Read it here : (some excerpts)

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israels retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollahs heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israels security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American ppreemptivetive attack to destroy Irans nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

(snip)

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah and shared it with Bush Administration officialswell before the July 12th kidnappings. Its not that the Israelis had a trap that Hezbollah walked into, he said, but there was a strong feeling in the White House that sooner or later the Israelis were going to do it.

(snip)

The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits, a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. Why oppose it? Well be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran.

Cheap war with many benefits. Where have we heard this before? *coughIraqcough*

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bushs first term and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah may be the A team of terrorists Israels campaign in Lebanon, which has faced unexpected difficulties and widespread criticism, may, in the end, serve as a warning to the White House about Iran. If the most dominant military force in the region the Israel Defense Forces cant pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million, Armitage said. The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.

What does Israel expect, to be greeted as liberators and saviors, or as the people blowing up my house, my neighborhood, my country? What kind of idiots would believe that...oh wait. Where have we heard that before? *cough cough* What? I'm sick.

Iraq.

Hmm, you hear something? Anyways.

The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanons infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanons large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official. The airport, highways, and bridges, among other things, have been hit in the bombing
campaign. The Israeli Air Force had flown almost nine thousand missions as of last week. (David Siegel, the Israeli spokesman, said that Israel had targeted only sites connected to Hezbollah; the bombing of bridges and roads was meant to prevent the transport of weapons.)

How'd that work out? Morons. To think that they will be turned by bombing their infrastructure. Think about it? You'd be angry at the bombers would you not?

The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran. (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Irans nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)

(snip)

The surprising strength of Hezbollahs resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back.

Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain
deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive
assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this, he said. When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran.

That is scary. These neocons are ruining the United States and are no doubt contributing to the collapse of American power. They failed in Iraq and are running under the same misguided assumption for war with Iran as they did about Iraq. They simply do not learn from their mistakes.

It is said that insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result.

Neocons, its safe to say, are fucking bat shit crazy.